What I saw today

- - Evangelizing the institutional church: an interview with Helmut Schüller

- Aesthetics and music from the NYT's philosophy blog ... Mozart vs. the Beatles. In the post he quotes Alex Ross’s New Yorker essay, Listen to This ...

Music is too personal a medium to support an absolute hierarchy of values. The best music is music that persuades us that there is no other music in the world. This morning, for me, it was Sibelius’s Fifth; late last night, Dylan’s “Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands”; tomorrow, it may be something entirely new. I can’t rank my favorite music any more than I can rank my memories. Yet some discerning souls . . . say, in effect, “The music you love is trash. Listen instead to our great, arty music” . . . . They are making little headway with the unconverted because they have forgotten to define the music as something worth loving. If it is worth loving, it must be great; no more need be said.